The present application relates to packet communication, for example high-speed cellular packet radio communication in the context of cellular communications networks, wireless local area communication or wire-line packet-based communication. Packet-based communication may comprise transmitting and receiving data using transmission control protocol, TCP, over internet protocol, IP for effecting communications.
Packet-based communication comprises transmitting information in packets, the packets comprising addressing information indicating at least a recipient of the packets. Nodes in packet-switched networks receive and forward packets based on the addressing information. Depending on the amount of traffic and capacities of links interconnecting nodes in a packet-switched network, the network may become congested.
The TCP protocol comprises congestion control methods which control the communications rate dynamically to adapt to changing network conditions, such as congestion or link instability, for example. Another example of a packet-based protocol is the user datagram protocol, UDP, which supports application-level congestion control.